Dark Beneath the Moon (33 page)

“Good point.” I collapsed onto the bed. “But what are they
doing
here?”

“That’s what everyone wants to know.”

I got up and paced the room. Ideas and plans flashed through my brain, each one replaced by the next as quickly as it bloomed. What would PrimeCorp pay to make sure their presence in Chron space stayed secret? Would they still be interested in Corvid tech, assuming I could get my hands on some, or the specs? Did I have any other information that might be even more useful to them now? The secret to the Corvid asteroids? The Corvid revelations about the nature of wormholes?

At that point in my musings I bumped up against the realization that had hit me when Paixon came and found me in the cargo pod. The only way I could capitalize on
any
of this was if I—and necessarily, the
Tane Ikai—
reached Nearspace in one piece. Which meant keeping Luta Paixon from doing something stupid and noble like trying to confront PrimeCorp here. I sighed. I might have to put my dislike for the woman aside and actually pretend to work with her.

And then it struck me that Pita had said something important. She thought she didn’t know what PrimeCorp could be doing here, but there was actually a good chance that she did know. She just didn’t realize it.

“Pita, how many of those classified files from the PrimeCorp main hub system have you actually cracked?”

A pause. “About half, why?”

“I’m wondering if there could be something that might explain why PrimeCorp is in Chron space?”

“Hmmm. Good idea. I’ll start checking.”

“Put a list of the decrypted ones on the screen, and I’ll go through them, too.”

The process took a while, since many of the file names weren’t terribly descriptive of their contents, and Pita hadn’t been discriminating about the files she’d grabbed. I couldn’t blame her, though, since I hadn’t told her to search for anything in particular. I’d really only wanted to see if she’d do it. If something came in handy later, great, but I didn’t have any high expectations that she’d find anything she could crack, anyway. She’d surprised me on that one.

So I sorted through financial reports (obviously a second set of books), employee records, dossiers on other corporations, product specs (some for illegal tech), manufacturing records, inventory sheets, shipping manifests, and archived press releases until my eyes burned and a tight knot of pain had settled behind my eyes. I had a fistful of leverage if I ever wanted to blackmail Alin Sedmamin, but nothing about the Chron.

And then suddenly, there it was. Something that made me consider that I might want to start distancing myself from PrimeCorp as soon as I possibly could.

I LEFT SORD
in her quarters, not deigning to reactivate the useless plasma bar. I didn’t know how she’d turned it off, but someone else could worry about that. As I entered the bridge, I got a close-up view of the asteroid we were hiding behind. The massive grey rock was shaped like a long potato, its surface pocked with the craters of hundreds of impacts. It tumbled in a slow, balletic dance through the vacuum. Baden turned to tell me something, but I held up a hand.

“As soon as the current crisis has passed, would someone come up with something better for keeping Ms. Sord in her quarters? I had to hunt her down on the cargo deck and interrupt her workout.”

Viss made an inarticulate noise over the ship’s comm and swore under his breath. “Could I tie her into a skimchair here on engineering?”

“I don’t think we’re quite there yet, Viss, but I’ll keep the suggestion in mind. Also, she’s probably listening in to every word we say, so let’s remember that, too. Baden, you can try to cut off her access, but I think it’s a lost cause. If you can figure out how she’s doing what she’s doing—I’d love to hear it.”

I sat in an empty skimchair, motioning to Hirin to stay where he was in the big chair. “What’s happening now?”

“PrimeCorp ship is stationary. She appears to be live, not derelict, no drift that I can detect. But not going anywhere, either,” Yuskeya said.

“Scanning? Running data? Collecting samples?”

“Well, they could be running data. No one seems to be EVA. It’s like they’re waiting for something.”

“Or someone. Us?”

Yuskeya shrugged. “How could they even know we were coming?”

I chewed my lower lip. I didn’t trust Sord, but I couldn’t truly imagine she could have anything to do with it. “We can try to sneak around them, but I’m damned curious about what—”

“New ship has entered scan range,” Yuskeya announced.

“Toward us?” I held my breath.

Yuskeya’s fingers tapped across her console. “They appear to be on a course for the PrimeCorp ship. And the new one—” she paused.

“What?”

“It’s Chron.”

My heartbeat felt suddenly fluttery, and my chest tightened, as if a band had drawn around it, too tight. I took a few deep breaths, calming the sensation. A clinical part of my brain added
heart palpitations, shortness of breath
to my growing list of symptoms. I’d have quite a litany to report to Mother, if we made it home to Nearspace in time.

“Stay with the asteroid,” I said, as Hirin said, “Hold course.” Our eyes met, and we smiled weakly at each other.

Rei said, “Aye,” and nothing more, keeping her eyes studiously on the board.

We still didn’t have a good visual on the ships, but the bridge was silent as we watched the two dots draw closer together. Were they about to engage in battle? Trade? Talk? But very simply, the Chron ship met up with the PrimeCorp ship and stopped.

“Tell me what I’m seeing here, somebody,” I said finally.

“It is what it looks like,” Yuskeya said, her voice tight. “PrimeCorp is apparently in contact with the Chron. The Protectorate will bury them when they find out about this.” She almost whispered the last sentence, but we all heard it.

“Well, we’d better make sure we get out of this system in one piece so that there’s evidence of it,” Baden said. “I’ll bet the last thing they want is a ship full of witnesses.”

“I’d give a good bit to listen in,” I said. “But how are they managing to talk at all? Cerevare? What do you make of it?”

The Lobor historian shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. That was one of the reasons I was so excited about discovering the Chron artifact moon—it might shed some light on the language.”

“And I didn’t think the Chron were any too interested in learning to speak Esper, when they were trying to kill off everyone who spoke it,” Rei added.

“Can we try to pick up any of the communication that’s passing between them?” Maja asked.

“You’re beginning to sound like Baden,” I told her. She smiled weakly.

“That’s my girl,” Baden said, but shook his head. “We’re too far out, and if we go closer, we risk being noticed.”

“Come on, folks, you’re not thinking this through,” came a voice from the rear of the bridge.

I didn’t even turn around. “I wondered how long it would take you to get here, Sord. You might as well come in and sit down where I can see you.”

She sauntered onto the bridge like she owned it, datapad in hand, sliding into one of the empty skimchairs at a research console.

“I thought you said you’d be surprised to find a PrimeCorp ship out here,” I said.

She grinned, mischief evident in her brown eyes. “What I actually said was that it would shock me if you found one. I didn’t think, if they
were
here, that they’d be that careless, hanging around in plain sight for anyone who happened to pop through a wormhole.”

I felt my hands clench into fists, and forced them to relax. Absolutely the most annoying person I’d ever met. “So, what do you think they’re talking about?”

Jahelia Sord shrugged. “I can’t guess specifics, but knowing PrimeCorp, I’d have to guess they’re making some kind of deal. That’s what PrimeCorp
does
.”

I thought about it. “So if PrimeCorp is carrying out a secret wormhole exploration project—”

Hirin nodded. “Like I said, it’s what they started out doing. That’s how they came to control so many planets in Nearspace; they funded the explorers, and got to the planets first.”

“And if they keep some of their discoveries secret—what if they’ve
always
done that? They can afford to pay the explorers to keep their mouths shut—”

“Or get rid of them if they won’t,” Jahelia Sord noted.

“I don’t doubt it,” Hirin said.

“Then they can explore those new systems themselves, and mine them for resources without conforming to Nearspace regulations,” I continued. “Maybe even make contact with species that live there.”

“Yeah, and get tech ideas or specs, or the complete technology from them,” Baden said. “Turn around and manufacture it in Nearspace as their own invention or discovery, instead of setting up trade with the real developers.”

“Captain,” Cerevare said. She’d been quiet through most of the discussion, but her eyes now were very dark and very serious. “PrimeCorp developed the first burst drive prototype not long after the Chron war. Supposedly it was in response to the fact that the Chron ships were so much faster than our own, and it was a significant factor in our vulnerability to them.”

“And Fha said something—about our burst drive—” her words echoed back to me. “
It is very similar to Chron technology
,”
I said slowly.

“So you’re thinking that PrimeCorp got the specs for a burst drive from the
Chron
?” Maja asked.

I nodded. “And then developed it and sold it to the Protectorate—at a high price, of course—as their own invention. And no doubt got applauded for helping the war effort and made mountains of cash.”

“You think PrimeCorp collaborated with the enemy?” Cerevare asked doubtfully.

Hirin chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I don’t know if the Chron would have been amenable to that, would they? According to everything we know, their only goal was to eradicate us.”

“True, I cannot see them cooperating with humans, especially to the point of sharing technology or information with them,” Cerevare agreed.

“You might want to rethink that.” Jahelia Sord held up her datapad, screen turned around to face us. “You don’t want to know how I have this, but it’s a classified file from the PrimeCorp main hub. I didn’t even know I had it until a short time ago.”

“What is it?” I asked, trying to make out the strange symbols on the screen.

“I think,” she said with a wry glance at it, “that it’s a Chron-Esper dictionary. From about a hundred years ago.”

Shocked silence reigned on the bridge until Yuskeya broke it. “Two more ships in range,” she said. “Moving fast, heading for the ones we’re watching. But coming from opposite directions.”

“More Chron?” Hirin asked.

“One of them reads as Chron, Captain,” she said, and I didn’t resent her calling him that at all. He was still in the big chair, and as much as it pained me to admit it, he was the best one to be there right now. “From its trajectory, it could have come from the vicinity of that planet we noticed when we arrived in-system.”

“And the other one?”

She pulled a deep breath. “Unless there’s something wrong with the scans—” She turned to him, frowning. “It’s another PrimeCorp ship.”

Hirin sat back in the chair, tapping his lips with steepled fingers. “What the hell is going on here?”

“PrimeCorp and the first Chron ship are moving,” Yuskeya said.

“Running?” I asked.

She turned to me, frowning. “No. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were taking up—battle positions.”

“
HOLD US STEADY
,” Hirin told Rei. “We don’t want to get caught up in this.”

“I don’t know if we have a choice,” Yuskeya said, glancing up from the nav console, her dark eyes troubled. “Three more ships have entered scan range. All read Chron drive signatures. All coming from the direction of the planet.”

“We should turn around,” Maja said. “We might make it to the wormhole, get to the Corvids—”

“We’d have to navigate the asteroids on the other side,” Hirin reminded her. “We might not get so lucky this time.”

No, we wouldn’t
, I thought. I was in far worse shape physically than I’d been short days ago. I didn’t have the coordination to help Rei pilot through another asteroid death trap. Maybe Hirin could—but he was still getting used to his rejuvenated body. If his reflexes were anything but a hundred percent—

“Two of the new ships have broken off and are heading this way,” Yuskeya said. She turned to Hirin. “They must have noticed us.”

Bright flashes of light around the PrimeCorp ship signalled that the first attackers had come within weapons range. The dots on the screen darted and swerved as the ships engaged. I stared at the bright blips of light, wishing I understood the situation better. Whose side were we on? Either one?